Moonstone weaves together stories of the ‘Spanish Flu’ or Great Influenza (H1N1) pandemic of 1918 with the birth of a sovereign Iceland and the cultural changes wrought by the advent of the cinema.
Continue reading “‘Spanish’ Flu and the Limits of Community: Sjón’s Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was“It is just over a century since the last global pandemic, the ‘Spanish’ Flu or Great Influenza of 1918-20. Since then, attitudes to some of the most basic human experiences have been changed by scientific understanding and revolutions in social and familial relations. For those of us with the privilege of access to modern medicine, there is a great gulf between our generation’s expectation of health, life and well being, and those of our great-grandparents. The experience of our bodies is very different to those who were or remain at the mercy of infection without antibiotics, cancer without chemotherapy, asthma without inhalers. The birth of a child is no longer ordinarily attended by the spectre of danger and death in much of the world.
Continue reading “Blog Intro by Gerardine Meaney”
